Starting woes for permaculture market garden

One problem I see in starting a Permaculture style market garden is time to profitability as many systems that are pemacultural take time to mature as opposed to annnual based systems . What do you recommend to get round this ?
My ideas are to spend very little lots of time grafting hard wood cuttings etc etc to build future productivity at little cost before I maybe launch the biz

David

Hi David,

Great questions!  

First of all I like to remember that improving the perennial nature of annual production is a good Permaculture practice that brings good profitability in the short-term.  Our Permabeds, which compose a soil conservation core maintained by rebuilding the path material and not tilling the central area allows the soil food web to mature and can greatly increase the productivity of your garden beds.

For trees grafting is a great idea.  Start with an Index Guild of perennials species near to your home and use these to see what does best and graft from them to grow your orchard.

By integrating your orchard with your garden you will benefit from the orchard trees through other ecosystem services like shade, snow trapping, habitat and organic matter in your annual garden until they mature and provide an edible service to your system.

Profit Resilience, outlined in my book looks at how we can achieve annual return from perennial investment-- key to widespread Permaculture success on a commercial scale.

🌿Zach

What's an index guild ? Is this one of your concepts or a general thing for my area ?

I think the I resource guild is basically an experimental planting to see what is going to work in your area with you management.   That way you don't waste a bunch of resources planting something that isn't going to be profitable for you.  Start with the resource guild then go from there,  at least that's how I interpreted that.....

It seems like if you integrated profitable annuals during your establishment phase right after your earthworks and other major land disturbances you could get around the lag in profitability between initial perennial planting and establishment.

Hi,

An Index Guild is a design concept and production strategy we describe in the book and use on our farm where perennial species are first trialled in zone 1-2 and form an index of the future production of those successful species.  It serves as a) space for trial and research, b) source of genetic material for propagation and finally, c) a zone 1-2 window into zone 3-4 production to aid in production forecasting.

-Zach